VINCENZO TRANI: FOR RUSSIA WITH LOVE

In the run-up to the war, the Kremlin has made sure to cover its back, transferring many vital activities, especially in the service sector, across the border, so that they appear as Western activities in Russia, and the origin of the money they control, finance, support, or even the presence of the state is concealed behind the façade of EU-registered corporate structures. For such an operation you need Western managers who can be trusted, and who have political cover behind them, within their own country, to prevent nasty surprises at the table where sanctions are decided.

The most difficult thing, if you want to work with Russian investors, is to gain their trust: ‘Wealth in Russia, unlike in Europe, is very young and clients are very closed. They try to hide personal information, which deprives the client of the ability to manage their risks effectively’[1] . So says Vincenzo Trani, an Italian entrepreneur with many medals on his chest: member of the board of directors of the Russian MIR Fund, Honorary Consul of the Belarusian Republic in Campania, President of the Italian-Russian Chamber of Commerce[2] , Advisor to the President of the International Sambo Federation (a bare-knuckle combat sport), awarded ‘For Business Development in Russia and Belarus’ and Officer of the Order of the Star of Italy. In short, one who knows how to win trust. Especially now that there are sanctions to deal with.

Born in Naples on 18 May 1974 into a family of bankers (his father is former head of the international department of Monte dei Paschi di Siena), after graduating he joined the same bank where his father works as a teller. In 2001, he read in the Moscow Times: the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) is looking for small and medium-sized credit professionals for the Russian bank KMB. Trani answered the ad, took a flight to Samara (855 km south-east of Moscow) and was hired as branch manager. Under his direction, he reportedly leads a crusade against widespread corruption, leading to the arrest of several employees[3] .

His career is rapid: after a year in the Samara branch, he is appointed vice-president on the board of KMB and moves to Moscow; in four years, the bank’s loan portfolio increases 100-fold[4] and, in 2005, Trani becomes one of the main players in the sale of KMB Bank to Italy’s Banca Intesa[5] . He then joined MDM Bank as head of the credit department for small and medium-sized enterprises and then, in 2006, became a shareholder and president of Rosenergobank, taking his father with him and making him an independent member of the Board[6] .

Every arrival is a new departure for him: in 2007 he tried to acquire the entire bank but, due to disagreements with the president Konstantin Schwartz (a man who has been the subject of several criminal prosecutions for fraud and is considered by Russian Crime to be an ‘expert thief, a criminal and a fraudster’[7] ), the deal fell through and Trani sold his share. With the money from the sale of the MDM share and from some real estate transactions, he founded Concern General Invest[8] , an international investment company with 100% Italian capital; its General Manager is Andrey Nikitiuk [9] (a former manager of Troika Dialog, an investment company founded by the American Peter Derby in 1991[10] ), considered one of the leading experts in financial matters in Russia: in a year and a half, the company’s capital grew by four million euros, mainly thanks to foreign clients[11] .

King of car sharing in Moscow and microcredit in Dushanbe

10 September 2015: Vincenzo Trani with Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and Deputy Mayor Maxim Liksutov during the presentation of the car sharing service[12]

In 2008 he founded Mikro Kapital Sarl in Luxembourg, a company with which he began investing in Russia and Belarus. The latter country is even more difficult than Russia, but Trani has a friend who is able to open all doors: Pavel Borodin, former Secretary of the Alliance between Russia and Belarus, a supranational body that encourages economic and political ties between the two countries[13] : ‘I met Borodin in 2009. I cannot tell you how, I can only say that I organised his trip to Rome and the Vatican’[14] . This friendship and professional bond launched Trani into the Olympus of foreign financial players in Russia. In 2011 Trani founded the Carnelutti law firm in Moscow[15] , which was awarded the IAIR Legal Awards in 2014 as the best Italian law firm in Russia.

Studio Carnelutti was founded over a century ago in Milan by a famous lawyer, the Friulian Francesco Carnelutti, who years later, in Naples, opened the first major Italian law firm specialising in international logistics[16] . Carnelutti was a fervent monarchist, but his reputation was such that he was invited by both Mussolini and the government of liberated Italy to participate in the commissions that reformed the Italian civil code[17] . Among his clients were many intellectuals and philosophers, from Julius Evola to Pier Paolo Pasolini[18] . Getting the brand to open a branch office in Moscow meant enjoying the esteem and trust of Italy’s largest and oldest industrial families[19] . The head of this firm is not Trani, but the tax lawyer Valery Podpaly, former head of KPMG Russia, famous for having managed the flight of the oligarchs’ assets in the days of Boris Yeltsin[20] .

In September 2015, after having long studied the Milanese model[21] , Trani inaugurated the car sharing service Delimobil (belonging to the Mikro Kapital Group) in Moscow, announcing that he intended to invest at least one billion roubles in the sector: It entrusts the development of the new service to one of its employees[22] , the young lawyer Stanislav Groshov [23] , and has as partners Artur Melikyan [24] (former board member of Onego Bank in Petrozavodsk and legal advisor to Vasily Shestakov, the president of the International Sambo Federation, a discipline beloved by Putin) ,[25] and Alina Nazarova [26] , one of the top managers of Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa-Bank[27] , the largest banking institution in Russia, among the first companies to be hit by US sanctions for the war in Ukraine[28] .

The business starts with 100 cars[29] : the goal, according to Trani, is to reach 1,500 vehicles by the end of the year, and Moscow would need at least 10,000 cars[30] . The company expands rapidly, the vehicles are equipped with new technologies with a focus on safety (insurance contracts are extremely expensive for this type of service) and, in 2017, a booking service is implemented via a digital application[31] .

That same year, Delimobil, which by now owns 3,000 vehicles, landed in St Petersburg, then in Ufa and Nizhny Novgorod, and in 2018, through Mikro Kapital, it acquired 100% of Anytime, a car sharing company founded by Roman Ilkanaev, present on the market since 2013 and with a fleet of 700 vehicles: Delimobil thus became the leading operator in Russia, with a fleet of 6,000 vehicles, occupying 50% of the total market in Moscow[32] . And the company continues to expand in Ekaterinburg, Samara, Grozny, Novosibirsk, Krasnodar, Rostov and Krasnoyarsk, and finally abroad, in Kazakhstan, with the Anytime brand[33] .

Rome, 2010: Vincenzo Trani and Pavel Borodin on a business visit[34]

Anytime arrives in Belarus in 2018 with the blessing of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the Belarusian-Italian Trade Commission, Evgeny Shestakov . The company, represented by Mikro Leasing, has offices in seven Belarusian cities, for which Trani is investing at least USD 87 million: the starting fleet is 55 cars, aiming for 80 by the end of the first quarter of 2019, to reach 500 within two years[35] .

In 2019 Trani also lands in Europe, in the Czech Republic, and in the same year announces its intention to offer shares to the public by listing on the New York stock exchange – where it aims to raise USD 350 million[36] – then on the Moscow stock exchange[37] , intentions that will be formalised in 2021[38] . Agreements are also negotiated to export car sharing to India[39] , Thailand[40] and Qatar[41] : Trani’s ambitious goal is to spread its brand to all developing countries[42] . Then comes 2020, the pandemic, everything stops, car sharing in Russia suffers a loss of 2.4 billion roubles[43] .

Delimobil reinvents itself and offers its partners chauffeur-driven vehicles for the delivery of goods[44] . Compared to its major competitors[45] , thanks to the skill of its management Delimobil avoided a crisis[46] . According to ‘Russian Crime’, the reason for this is the protective wing of the mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin , and the head of the Moscow transport department Maxim Liksutov , who intervene with subsidies[47] ; Denis Saklakov, a partner at Mikro Kapital, is a close friend of Liksutov[48] … Deliveries for Delimobil are made by Avilon, whose sales director is Liksutov’s deputy, Dmitry Pronin [49] . These are not crumbs: Avilon has a near monopoly in the luxury car market and has supply contracts with the government worth 31 billion roubles[50] .

In July 2021, the Russian bank VTB – one of the largest in the country, now in difficulty due to sanctions[51] , which has already been supporting Delimobil since 2019 with a subsidised credit programme, enters Delimobil, buying a 13.4% stake in it for USD 75 million[52] . Trani signs the contract with Yuri Soloviev, chairman of the board of VTB Bank : the deal is thus between two Luxembourg companies, VTB Capital, where the directors of Vistra Group manage USD 2.5 billion in assets, and Mikro Kapital, the holding company that controls Delimobil, Anytime and Anytime Prime[53] .

Meanwhile, Delimobil is also expanding in Dushanbe: in March 2021, Mikro Kapital, the EBRD and the Dutch Bank for Entrepreneurial Development (FMO) pay USD 5.4 million to acquire 78.5% of IMON, a Tajik micro-credit fund: after this transaction, the EBRD and FMO each hold 17.9% of IMON’s capital, while Mikro Kapital becomes the main shareholder with a 42.7% stake[54] . It is a credit operator founded by two women after the end of the bloody civil war, Gulbakhor Makhkamova and Sanavbar Sharipova, who wanted to encourage women entrepreneurs[55] . An act of true heroism, given that Tajikistan has the most conservative culture on the entire Asian continent.

Gulbakhor Makhkamova and Sanavbar Sharipova, two Tajik women entrepreneurs who founded IMON, a successful microcredit company, acquired by Vincenzo Trani in 2021 with the support of the Tajikistan government[56]

The takeover is hailed as a success, even though the two women now hold only 1.35 per cent of the shares each, which removes any decision-making power from them[57] . The OCCRP news network uncovers the dark side of the transaction: Trani tried to force the women to sell with public campaigns of discredit and slander, accusing IMON of irregularities[58] , finding a powerful backing in the National Bank of Tajikistan, whose vice-president is Jamoliddin Nuraliev , son-in-law of President Emomalī Rahmon[59] . Despite the protests, says Trani, the purchase was carried out ‘in full compliance with local legislation’ and the ‘corporate decisions of the parties involved’[60] .

The hostility of the presidential family towards IMON began as early as 2017, when the authorities accused the management of serious irregularities: this is a common practice in Tajikistan, when private activities take on too large a scale, which is intolerable to the powers that be[61] . Trani enters the share capital with 10 per cent in 2018[62] , but uses his shares to access documents that can be used to blackmail the shareholders and top management of the fund[63] .

Renzi in Delimobil: touch and go

Matteo Renzi joins Delimobil in November 2021 and resigns after the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine[64]

In November 2021, a new face appears at the board table of Delimobil: Matteo Renzi, former Prime Minister and Senator of the Italian Republic. The news has a particular prominence in Italy, since the leader of Italia Viva is already at the centre of controversy for his ties with Saudi Defence Minister (and Crown Prince) Mohammed bin Salman (considered by the international community to be the instigator of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi[65] ), whose ‘neo-Renaissance’ commitment he praises: On this occasion, it is revealed that Matteo Renzi is on the board of the prince’s foundation and that he earns up to USD 80,000 a year for this role[66] . The following 6 March, Renzi also travels to the United Arab Emirates for unknown reasons, a fact that throws fuel on the fire[67] .

While a turbulent government crisis is unfolding in Italy, here he is in Russia: Matteo Renzi has been a director of the Luxembourg company since last August, but this is only made public a few months later[68] . The documentation filed with the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) by Delimobil contains a reference to the investigations involving the former Prime Minister on the financing of the Open Foundation, the hypothesis of false invoices for fees received for a conference in Abu Dhabi, and the affair of the fee paid by the production company of the documentary ‘Florence according to me’, which is being investigated by the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office: the prospectus warns that, in the event of negative developments in the investigation, Renzi could be forced to leave the Board, although, it adds, “Mr Renzi and his lawyers consider these allegations to be unfounded”[69] .

To those who point out to the senator the conflict of interest between his role as a politician and that of businessman, he replies that he does not violate the law – and after all, Italy is the country where Silvio Berlusconi, the owner of the largest television empire, despite being criminally convicted, is a senator and has been Prime Minister: ‘When the laws change I will do the same’, says Renzi[70] . He does not fail to renew his esteem for Vincenzo Trani, with whom he has a personal relationship born during his presidency of the Council at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum[71] .

He is not the first Italian in Delimobil: Renzi takes the place of the lawyer Pietro Maria Tantalo, appointed together with Trani in the criminal investigation into the Vatican transactions of Gianluigi Torzi, the broker accused of committing financial crimes using Vatican funds[72] . Another Italian on the board is Andrea Farace, former manager of Citigroup and former manager of Wirecard, the German digital payments company that went bankrupt following a huge financial scandal[73] . Also on the board is Vittorio Volpi, chairman of the supervisory board of Mikro Kapital and former consultant for Mediobanca[74] .

The Renzian idyll with Delimobil is marred by two events: the first concerns the postponement of the listing on Wall Street, decided on 5 November 2021, justified by Trani with a meagre ‘the conditions are not yet in place’. It is TASS that says more: Delimobil would postpone the listing until early 2022, in the last month the company has set itself the goal of raising at least USD 240 million to reach a valuation of over USD 900 million, but apparently the conditions to achieve this, whatever the reasons, are not there[75] .

The second event is the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine: a few hours after the start of the invasion, on 24 March 2022, Renzi is forced to resign[76] . His presence in Delimobil is now in everyone’s eyes inappropriate, also due to the recent takeover by the Kremlin’s bank, VTB. His remuneration as a director at Delimobil is not known, but based on the directors’ fees in 2020 (which amount to a total of EUR 1 million per year), Renzi is supposed to have received remuneration of between EUR 38,500 and EUR 45,5000[77] . His resignation comes at the same time as that of the former Finnish Prime Minister Esko Aho, who on the same day resigned as an independent director and member of the Board of Supervisors at Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank[78] .

The aces in the sleeve

Italy’s top lobbyist in Moscow, Antonio Fallico, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov[79]

Vincenzo Trani has very effectively constructed the image of the man who started from nothing, only to have answered a banal job advertisement on a newspaper page, and become a very rich entrepreneur. But, in reconstructing his path, the dense network of important friendships, especially in the political sphere, sown between Russia and Belarus – as we have seen so far – jumps out at you. Add to this a great managerial unscrupulousness, always on the razor’s edge between legal and illegal[80] .

It all revolves around its creature, the Mikro Kapital Group[81] , which operates through two securitisation funds, Mikro Fund and Alternative. Its business activities, like its political relations, are concentrated in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, but its registered office is in Luxembourg, so it is a Western company. It offers bonds with slightly above-average yields, so many European and d American investors (even the Vatican) attend the banquet[82] . The money raised finances the micro-loans granted by Mikro Kapital’s numerous subsidiaries and the acquisition of strategic companies in difficulty: the company is currently present in 14 countries and has 122 portfolio companies[83] .

The St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) of 16-18 June 2016 is the launching pad for Trani’s Mikro Kapital: the most eagerly awaited event of the edition was the bilateral between the then Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Vladimir Putin, on the sidelines of which Casa Italia, an exhibition pavilion for the giants of Italian industry, was created[84] . The organisation of the event is managed by Conoscere Eurasia, the association led by Antonio Fallico, ‘the most powerful Italian in Moscow’, president of Banca Intesa Russia – the Russian subsidiary of the Intesa Sanpaolo group[85] – and a great friend of the Northern League leadership, to whom Vladimir Putin sends funds[86] .

Mikro Kapital appears for the first time among the main sponsors of the event, along with giants such as Banca Intesa, the state-owned arms factory Leonardo, and Pirelli, but one of its payments of 125,000 euro to the Conoscere Eurasia association is reported to Bankitalia’s Financial Intelligence Unit as a possible suspicious financial flow: the value of the transaction is compatible with what is usually required to become one of the main sponsors of the St Petersburg Forum[87] . Nothing happens.

The ties are not only with the League: in the Forum, keeping him company is one of his long-standing friends[88] , the then Italian Deputy Foreign Minister (PD) Vincenzo Amendola, later Undersecretary of State for European Affairs during the Draghi government: three years later, his name appears for six months on the supervisory board of Mikro Kapital Management in Luxembourg, from 28 February to 9 September 2019, i.e. five days after his official appointment as Deputy Foreign Minister of the Conte II government[89] .

26 January 2021: Vladimir Putin presides over a historic video conference with ‘his’ Italian businessmen at his home in Novo-Ogaryovo[90]

For Trani, therefore, friendships are at the heart of his success, even if it sometimes happens that he has the wrong ones: between 2014 and 2017, the entrepreneur’s destiny crossed paths with that of Enrico Danieletto, owner of the Luxembourg-based B Securitization SA and several other companies seeded between Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Switzerland: Danieletto is indicted in 2020 for aggravated fraud, money laundering and self-laundering for an alleged diamond scam committed in conjunction with the former president of Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio Mirandola Giovanni Belluzzi[91] . With Trani he founded General Invest Ltd, based at 26 Cadogan Square in London[92] .

As of 2021, having trade relations with Russia is an element of great embarrassment for Italy: at the beginning of the year, the international climate is very tense, Putin threatens with 100,000 men massed at the border to invade Ukraine, the West prepares sanctions. And it was in this context that on 26 January, Putin, together with eight ministers and the head of the oil company Rosneft, organised a videoconference with Italy to discuss trade relations at a time of war with senior industrial executives[93] .

President Mario Draghi asked the companies to leave the meeting, and some of them, including ENEL and SNAM, decided not to participate, while 16 companies, including executives from Assicurazioni Generali, UniCredit and Pirelli, did not back down. Vincenzo Trani, as President of the Italian-Russian Chamber of Commerce, is in the front row and presides over the two and a half hour meeting, emphasising ‘that Italian business continues to see Russia as a reliable partner’[94] . The meeting was stigmatised by both the opposition[95] and the European Union[96] . But the virtual meeting on 26 January was only a prelude to what was to take place a few months later.

The St. Petersburg Forum in June 2021 was born under the worst auspices: the US let it be known through its State Department spokesman that it ‘will not participate in the SPIEF in any capacity’, urging other world leaders to join the boycott[97] . There is embarrassment among the participants, fear of becoming the target of sanctions[98] . In the forefront is the general director of the Confindustria Russia Association, Alfredo Gozzi, and the unfailing Vincenzo Trani, who stubbornly defends the Forum: ‘All these people have come to Russia to earn money’, and not to play politics[99] .

And finally, here is the war

Moscow, 5 February 2020. From left: Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Vincenzo Trani, Vladimir Putin and RSBM JSC Chairman Alexander Braverman[100]

Trani’s activity in Russia can be divided into three phases: a first, in which the business lawyer built a privileged path for Italian entrepreneurs wishing to open up to the Russian market. A second phase, linked to the birth and development of Delimobil, in which Trani began to bring together entrepreneurs from the two countries, not only to develop projects in Russia, but also to allow Russian capital to invest in the West. This phase ended with the failure of the plan to list Delimobil on the American stock exchange, and with the resignation of politicians who, like Matteo Renzi, had chosen Trani as a means of transport from politics to the international business world.

Then war broke out. At this point, if nothing had changed, we would have witnessed a sort of sell-off of assets and, at the same time, a cross-flight of Western investors from Russia and vice versa. But no. Our analysis of the corporate network coordinated by Vincenzo Trani and the Carnelutti law firm in Moscow shows a sudden growth in the number of companies, in the East as well as the West, linked to the original holding company, Mikro Kredit, which doubled between December 2021 and February 2023 – the network currently counts over a hundred operating entities, plus the offshore financial companies scattered around the planet[101] .

This is because Putin, with the video conference on 26 January 2021, inaugurated a new phase: the one in which the Trani network becomes a part of the Russian economy and politics that acts in the West, with Western men at its helm, with the appearance of being supported by Western capital – a phase for which Putin chose, not by chance, Italy, which had already shown itself to be more open to collaboration with Moscow in the past[102] . Mikro Kredit is, to this day, an instrument of Putin’s policy that acts from Luxembourg and will never be affected by the sanctions but, on the contrary, promises to grow as the war in Ukraine continues. Nothing illicit, nothing secret. It is just that we in the West have our eyes focused on other matters.